the food-mood CONNECTION

The last few years has seen the emerging field of nutritional psychiatry provide us with the scientific evidence that clearly shows the connection between what we eat and how we feel. Demonstrated in a 2010 research study by Felice Jacka, head of the Food and Mood Centre at Deakin University and president of the International Society of Nutritional Psychiatry, women whose diets were higher in vegetables, fruit, fish and wholegrains, with moderate amounts of red meat, were less likely to have depression or anxiety disorders than those who consumed a typical western diet of processed foods, pizza, chips, burgers, white bread and sweet drinks.

Thanks to the vagus nerve – the big cranial nerve connecting the brain to the gut, popularly referred to as the gut-brain axis – signals are sent to the brain from the gut